A Moment in the Rain

A/N: This story has not yet been beta'd - read at your own risk to poor grammar, misspelling, and slight word confusion. I hope to have this fixed soon, I just happen to love my beta and don't want to stress her out cause she rocks my world! ;)

Two years. Two years has passed since all of this started and still every night they come like chains in waiting, tying me down, plaguing me, making me utterly useless for hours on end until the torture ends and I collapse into a world of oblivion, haunted then only by dreams. They come in fragmented wisps of memory, fabrications of an overactive mind, and jarring words of truth that over lay anything sweet that may have come my way.

Morning after morning I wake, gasping and sitting bolt upright. Sweat drenched and trembling I fall from my bed and make my way to the en suite loo where I fumble with the brass handles of the shower until water is cascading over my body at a temperature that's nearly too hot to bare. This is where my functional mind wakes up and steps to the forefront of my thoughts. Everything gets organized, categorized, and tucked into its appropriate slots.

I strip away my soaking pajamas and kick them to the back of the shower stall, like I do every day. I lather my layers of hair with product, watching as the suds run down my body, circle the drain, and disappear forever. Such a quick escape. So painless, executed with such ease...

Stepping from the shower I work on taming my hair and fixing my face, don my bathrobe, and head back into my bedroom. I'm prepared by now to confront the day head on. No one knows of the lingering images that dancing around me in the night, none of them know of my morning rituals. All any of them know is that their bright and cheerful bookworm is still and always will be just that - bright and cheerful. Demanding and uncompromising over those things which I am most passionate about. None of them know my secrets. I carry them close to my heart, treasured and for myself alone.

I've been living in a flat with Ginny for nearly a year now. She and Harry have been together steadily since the war's end. Ron lives with Harry a few blocks over in the refashioned home that was once the dank and dreary House of Black. Their homestead is now most commonly referred to as the Bitch Pitch. Partially in due to the portrait of Sirius' mother that still hangs in the entry way, partially in reference to Quidditch. Boys. What do you do with them other than love them?

And there you have it. The juncture that leads to the backbone of my story - who am I kidding? It's the backbone to myself. Ron and I tried dating. It was a brief and miscalculated affair that caused a month's worth of lingering awkwardness, but you don't traipse through hell with someone to be put off by them just because a snagging session makes you feel as though you're pawing up your sibling. Ew. Right, well...

I didn't invest a lot of hope in the relationship from the get go. I love Ron dearly, I do. But I won't ever be in love with him. How can you expect a person, even yourself, to give away your heart when it is no longer yours to hand over? Without even realizing it, I placed my heart in the hands of the enemy two long years ago. I haven't seen my heart since then, even though I have seen the enemy.

The war... was something worse than even my imagination could have conjured. The deaths didn't remain contained in the bodies that fell. Instead it permeated the air, surrounded each of us even as we moved forward and battled through the ranks. It dogged our heels even before we actually had to suffer the witnessing of death firsthand.

We were captured during our search for the horcruxes. It was bound to happen. We all knew it was a probability but we had hoped for the best. Not only that, but we had gone for so long without detection! All because Harry said that bastard's name! I still bristle over the situation in case you can't tell.

They bound us together. I had spelled Harry's face, causing his features to swell, making him slightly less recognizable. Ron and I, however, were obvious targets. The word 'mudblood' was tossed about in attempts to hurt or anger me. It did neither. The sting behind its implications had long ago dulled.

Dragged along together we were taken to Malfoy Manor. Of all the fecking places in the world. Dread filled my stomach, pooling in the empty cavern like lead, weighing me down and causing my feet to stumble worse than before. Bile rose in the back of my throat and I was fighting back tears before we ever even reached the magnificent front doors.

He was there. Of course he was. The world had narrowed down. His crazy bint of an aunt became background noise, annoying and buzzing as she ranted. His father was nothing more than a white robed blur at the edge of my vision. Hot, stank breath filtered across my nose, filling my mouth with the taste of acid and my leaded stomach rolled but I paid it no mind. My eyes betrayed me, I have no doubt, for they were focused on one person in the room I could still see clearly.

Draco was by the fireplace, which was large and ridiculous in its own accord. His proud stance was gone and in its place were stooped shoulders, a head that hung low, hair falling over his face and obscuring his eyes from my line of sight, and robes that belied how much weight he had lost.

I couldn't stifle the gasp that escaped my lips when he looked up. His eyes - his eyes that had once been silver and so full of life even if their light had only been fueled by anger - were now empty and lackluster. They were dull, dead, and supported by dark bruises underneath the pale lashes framing his gray orbs. His skin was ashen and his hair was limp.

The boy in front of me... this young man... was nothing more than a shell of his former self. I couldn't for the life of me figure out what had happened to make him this way. Then a hand was grasping my face roughly, nails digging into my cheeks and jaw, and my gaze snapped to the cruel image lingering in front of me. In the distance I could barely make out Draco's face as he winced and turned away. He wasn't exempted from the activities for long, however.

They called him over to identify us. He stared at his feet and mumbled until sharp words slapped him through the air. His back stiffened in a conditioned response and the shutters slammed shut over his eyes. There was nothing left behind to be seen.

He didn't do it. Didn't tell them exactly one way or the other. He hemmed and hawed and received verbal abuse for it but he didn't cave. They knew who I was anyway. I stood helpless as they released me from the binds holding me to their other prisoners, my friends and confidants. Harry and Ron were screaming and struggling as they were dragged away. Their futile attempts at helping me fell deaf under my own screams as the most blinding agony ripped through my body.

I was raised off the ground with the strength of the spell. I felt as though my skin were being ripped from bone and muscle, shredded and melted from my frame. As I fell to the floor in a sobbing head of despair, I was able to raise my head enough to search the room for the one person who had been the star of memories that had sustained me through our travels thus far. His face was contorted was disgust and agony. The last coherent thought I had had was that at least he wasn't cheering them on.

I came to at Shell Cottage. I was numb through out the rest of the days of war, sustained and driven out of duty to my friends and the desire to see the madness end. I saw Draco once more, on the fields of battle at Hogwarts. He was there in the Come and Go Room. Harry pulled him from the fire that chased our lives, set by his own chum to destroy us and everything else.

He was there pleading for his life at the hands of one of his own, a Death Eater whose wand was trained on the pale face I had once kissed, words and pleas spilling from lips that had once caressed my own... Then he was there when it ended, huddled in the corner with his parents; sitting in the Great Hall looking lost and forlorn.

My skin had crawled and my lips tingled nearly unpleasantly hours after I had thrown myself into Ron's arms, a rash and nearly unspeakable act driven by his words... Ron had grown. He was a man in his own right. No longer just the youngest in the line of Weasley men, no longer standing in Harry's shadow. He was passionate and loyal and funny, sweet, and kind - all the things women dream of finding in a suitable mate. But even that early on it felt wrong.

Draco had disappeared. Sure, he showed up at his trial in the Ministry. Harry had spoken on his behalf, as well as his parents', telling all of Wizenmont of the Malfoys' change of heart by the end of the war. I didn't attend the hearing, nor did I so much as permit a glance at the rag calling itself the Daily Profit. Still, news reached my ears over time.

Charities were formed and flourished. Donations were made in ridiculous sums to St. Mungo's, Hogwarts, Diagon Alley, and Hogsmead - all of them from an unknown benefactor, all of them in the name of peace and well being for the new world we were working to usher in.

Thus I settled into the routine I continue now. Night terrors, scalding showers, brave face, burying myself in work, sleep, speak, and repeat.

I had taken a job in Diagon Alley. Amidst the rebuilding efforts came the need for organizers and overseers of the projects we were taking upon ourselves. Knockturn Alley had been evacuated, the buildings all but demolished. In their place would be new stores catering to the good of the Wizarding World. Plans for a grand library were being constructed and it was my pet project. However, in the bustle of rebuilding elsewhere, funds for the project were continuously being shoved to the back burner.

I refused to give up on the dream and continued to make list after list. I complied systems on how the library would be run, how big a staff would be needed, I covered each and every base I could think of. All of this was done in the small breaks I allowed myself away from the towers of paper work I was assigned for all of our other projects. The office I worked in was relatively small, but constantly busy. Therefore, I didn't look up when the small bell over the door chimed. In fact, I didn't look up at all until a small slip of paper was slid in front of my face and its contents were read.

A donation of five thousand galleons dedicated to the Liberties Library, my pet, my project, and my personal escape and esteemed plan. I blinked several times; rereading the words until I assured myself they were real. Then slowly, ever so slowly, I raised my head.

He was gorgeous. Not the boy that had held me on the cold floor of a forgotten bathroom, not the broken man that had stood by and watched me tortured within an inch of my life, but an Earth bound god cloaked in rich fabrics with eyes that pierced straight through to my soul, rendering me breathless and hopelessly floating in twin snow storms of silver and blue.

Words refused to come as I sought for reasoning. Without every opening his mouth he said so much. He pleaded and begged forgiveness, understanding. The very things he had asked for the last time he had spoken to me directly. So much time, so much pain, and here he was at long last keeping his promise. Or was he? Was he simply making amends or was he here to claim me once more?

"I'm sorry." The statement was shaky, spoken barely above a whisper. The torture laced and woven in those two, tiny, simple words pierced through the wards I had constructed for myself around my withered heart. My pulse picked up, my heartbeat again - really beat again with hope and confusion and the hope! - for the first time that I could remember in that moment.

"Why..." my tongue failed me. I shook my head slowly, trying to ascertain that the image in front of me was real and not an illusion, my ravaged mind had too often been cruel to me, and tried again. "Why are you here?"

"I told you I would come back for you. I promised."

Silence. It was a blanket of safety as my pulse pounded in my ears and my breathing seemed too ragged for it to be normal.

"Why did it take you so long?"

"I had to make amends. Show you how sorry I was. Show you I was ready for a change that I was changing. That I was doing it for you."

"What-"

"You didn't see?" His face fell and a bit of the boy I had known so long ago peeked through. My heart fluttered and my stomach had an odd ache in it that was uncomfortable and welcomed in the same. "It was in the papers, the donations. And before you say anything, I know money doesn't say much, so I've been there as well. It took some time before they trusted me, but I've been there, working - helping to rebuild. Didn't Potter tell you?"

I blanched, my thoughts all released from their confines screamed at me from their relentless circling inside of my head. "Ha-Harry knew? He knew you were... helping?"

Draco nodded. "Out at Hogwarts. For the past six months. I was reassigned to Knockturn Alley last week. I got wind of your project and where you were working just yesterday. So I'm here today. I thought..." he trailed off, his gaze falling to the floor.

"You thought what?" I whispered, my throat already raw from the mixture of anger at Harry and the attempt to hold back tears.

"I thought if you knew, and that surely by now you would, that at least you would be willing to give me a chance... to make good on my promise. I didn't know that - I thought that - well, Potter's never really been one to keep things to himself, has he?"

With that I made a silent vow to curse Harry, something horribly painful and detrimental. Perhaps a freezing spell on his libido. No sex for a month, not even a wank, just to begin evening the score for keeping this information from me. But that line of thought made me wonder why Harry had withheld the information. Did he know something more than what he let on?

"Harry keeps his secrets when he feels there's a reason. Do you think he had a reason?"

A slight blush crept over Draco's cheeks. I had never seen him blush before and I felt a tiny, traitorous part of me fall in love with the man in front of me.

"I apologized to him... and I, I told him about... what had happened. All of it."

I was glad I was sitting; otherwise I would have hit the floor. Harry knew!

"How long ago?" I managed to ask.

"Three months."

It was too much, too fast. I stood quickly and fled down the short hallway that emptied into the back alley. As soon as I pushed through the doors a late London rain caught me in its embrace. I stood trembling and panting, face raised to the sky, arms hugging myself tight around my stomach as though my arms along could hold me together, prevent the pieces from falling apart. Rain and tears danced on my face.

"Hermione." Softly spoken. A caress of vocal cords reaching out to me. I shook harder and turned slowly, lowering my head to lock eyes with Draco once more. "Please?"

I offered no resistance as he closed the gap between us. I didn't fight the float to freedom found in his embrace, surrounded by strong arms and a scent that brought happier times, however corrupted they might actually be, crashing over me. He held me tightly to him in an embrace that suggested he never wanted to let go. A soft mantra of apologizes, promises, and devotions were being spoken into my hair. Gentle hands ran up and down my back.

Slowly, so slowly, after an immense lapse in time had passed, those hands pulled back and ran up my arms, not slowing in their trek until they were carefully cradling my face between silken palms. Draco tilted my head back till his eyes could look into my own. Unspoken words once more passed between us. I gave my accent and his lips gently passed over mine.

I surrendered the last ounce of myself that I had been clinging to, instead winding myself closer to the man who had tucked my heart into his back pocket in the presence of a ghost on a damp and stained floor. He was gentle as he explored my mouth, reacquainting himself with taste and contour. I drank him in, the air I had been without, the water I had been refused, the sentience to life I had been lacking.

The rest of the world could have come to an end that afternoon. Life is a strange and demanding affair of twists and turns that taxes each and every one of us. None of it is ever easy - surely life from this moment forward will become more complex and demanding than it has been in months of late. But I finally will no longer be alone. My journey has come to the crossroads where I have found a partner - my partner - to travel with. Whatever comes our way, we'll face it together.

Nightmares will cease now that I hold the key to their solution in my arms. Best of all, I have finally been granted my wish. Draco Malfoy not only came back, but he loves me and has given me the hope that whatever promises he makes in the future will be upheld, no matter the amount of time it takes to fulfill them.